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2015 National Poetry Month Kidlitosphere Events Roundup

Did you know that National Poetry Month is “the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers, students, K-12 teachers, librarians, booksellers, literary events curators, publishers, bloggers, and, of course, poets marking poetry’s important place in our culture and our lives every April”?

Now, here’s a list of what some kidlit bloggers are doing. If you’re also celebrating Poetry Month with a special project or blog event, or know of anyone else who is, please email me: readermail (at) jamakimrattigan (dot) com, so I can add the information to this Roundup. Thanks!

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2015 KIDLITOSPHERE POETRY EVENTS

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Irene Latham at Live Your Poem has recruited 30 poets for her fourth annual Kidlit Progressive Poem. This is a wonderful community writing project where a poem travels daily from blog to blog, with each host adding a new line. Here’s the full schedule of participating bloggers:

Irene’s personal poetry project at Live Your Poem is ARTSPEAK! She’ll be writing daily poems inspired by the online collections of the National Gallery of Art, focusing on dialog, conversations, asking, what does the piece say?

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At Author Amok, Laura Shovan is hosting “What Are You Wearing?” — a full month featuring poetry about clothes. On Mondays and Wednesdays, look for guest bloggers, who’ll share a favorite clothing-related poem with a paragraph or two of introduction. On Fridays Laura will post a roundup of original clothes poems (send her yours via email: laurashovan (at) gmail (dot) com). Don’t miss this literary fashion show!

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Strap yourselves in your seats and get ready for an emotional roller coaster at A Year of Reading!Mary Lee Hahn’s project is called PO-EMotions. She will be writing a poem each day that evokes an emotion or uses an emotion word in the title or body of the poem. She’s inviting everyone to play along by either posting poems in the comments or at their own blogs. Check out this list of the 30 Emotions she’ll be writing about (she’ll also be cross-posting at her personal poetry blog, Poetrepository).

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Jone MacCulloch will be sharing student poetry daily at Check It Out. She’s also once again doing her annual Poetry Postcard Project, where Silver Star ES students send out illustrated poetry postcards to anyone requesting them. Sign up HERE if you’d like to receive one. This is a wonderful project — seven years running so far — I always enjoy receiving my postcard each April.

At Deo Writer, Jone is hosting her first month-long writing challenge. She’ll be playing with poems that have something to do with nature and double “ll’s,” (like in her last name). She invites everyone to join her — here’s the list of words she’ll be using as prompts.

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Diane Mayr at Random Noodling presents Ekphrastic Mondays! Beginning April 6, she will post an original poem inspired by a work of art. So that’s four Mondays, four pairings. It’s like getting a two-course meal each week: literary + visual. 🙂

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At Today’s Little Ditty, Michelle Heindenrich Barnes is spotlighting 2015 Newbery Medal Winner Kwame Alexander as her Ditty of the Month Club special guest! She’s kicking things off with an awesome interview, giveaway, and an invitation to write a poem (or poems) this month in response to Kwame’s ditty challenge. She’ll post poems on the blog as they come in all month long, and then feature them all in a wrap-up post at the end of the month. Send your poems to: TodaysLittleDitty (at) gmail (dot) com.

Over at The Poem Farm, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is playing a game called Sing That Poem! Each day she’ll post a new original poem with the meter of a well-known song. Folks can print a PDF and try to match each day’s poem with the song it was inspired by. She’ll also post a recording each next day with the answer. Her goal in this project is to stretch her writing muscles into new meters.

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Linda Baie at TeacherDancewill be doing a lot of writing this month. In addition to participating in the Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem, Mary Lee Hahn’s Po-EMotions Challenge, and Laura Shovan’s What Are You Wearing Challenge, she’s going to challenge herself to write a haiku or other related form every day. Check in with her at her blog to cheer her on!

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April Halprin Wayland and her trusty canine muse Eli will be feeding us a PPP (previously published poem) every day all month long. This tasty smorgasbord will be culled from various books, magazines and anthologies and promises to be a real treat! Check in at the blog for your daily April fix.

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Over at The Miss Rumphius Effect, Tricia Stohr-Hunt will be focusing on poetic forms: “I want to shine a spotlight on forms other than strictly rhyming (though rhyme is perfectly fine) for the elementary and middle school classroom. I love rhyme just as much as the next person, but I worry that much of the poetry parents select for kids and teachers select for classrooms is chosen simply because it rhymes. And I don’t want the merit or “goodness” of poetry judged simply on this trait. Kids need to be exposed to poets old (classic) and new, poems funny and serious, in the glorious range that exists. Poetry for kids can be smart and challenging and I want to highlight this aspect. In addition to focusing on forms, I’ll also be sharing the thoughts of selected poets.”

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Liz Steinglass will also be writing a poem every day this month. Her theme this year is items hiding in or on a desk. Hmmm, wonder if there are any bears on her desk? Or food? Should be interesting. 🙂 Check in with her daily to find out!

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Laura Purdie Salas will be sharing tips on presenting poetry to students at Writing the World for Kids. She’ll also include a poem that is relevant to each daily tip.

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Serena at Savvy Verse and Wit is hosting a National Poetry Month Celebration and Blog Tour. This year’s theme is “The Search for New Perspective.” She says, I’d love to have guests talk about how poetry changed their perspective about something, even if it is just one poem, or how you think poetry can change perspective to not only reach more readers but leave a lasting impression.” Add your blog post URLs to her link-up any time during April and check out what other bloggers are contributing!

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Rhyming picture book lovers, don’t miss Angie Karcher’s 2015 Rhyming Picture Book Month (RhyPiBoMo)! This is a month-long writing challenge for children’s writers aspiring to write rhyming picture books, poetry, and to add poetic techniques to their prose. The roster of fabuloso guest bloggers includes Nikki Grimes, Marilyn Singer, Iza Trapani, Kwame Alexander, J. Patrick Lewis, Ann Whitford Paul and Janet Wong. Angie is awarding daily prizes, and there’s also a Poetry Contest! You must register to be eligible for prizes and to enter the Poetry Contest (deadline: April 8, 2015). Check out the Guest Blogger Schedulehere.

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As is her annual Poetry Month practice, Liz Garton Scanlon will be writing a haiku every day this month. She’ll be posting her haiku with a photo and sharing on Twitter, Facebook, and at her LiveJournal blog, Liz in Ink. She’s inviting everyone to join her — post yours via social media, at your own blog or in a private journal.

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Check in every Friday at A Penny and Her Jots for more great episodes of A Great Nephew and a Great Aunt! Penny Parker Klostermann and her great-nephew Brandon began collaborating last Fall — she writes a poem and he illustrates it. They’ve had so much with this series that they’ve invited others to join them. Look for another Penny and Brandon episode on April 10 and special guests on the other Fridays.

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At Beyond LiteracyLink, Carol Varsalona will be featuring her own “Poetry Parade”: poems and posts written in response to several Poetry Month Challenges, including Jone MacCulloch’s “Double LL” Challenge and another located at #digipoetry on Twitter, organized by Margaret Simon. Her eagerly anticipated “Winter Whisperings: A Gallery of Artistic Expressions,” featuring poem-image pairings submitted by poets from around the country, Canada, Europe and beyond, has been unveiled and can be viewed here. The featured verse form is the zeno, invented by former Children’s Poet Laureate J. Patrick Lewis.

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Check in with Tanita S. Davis for a haiku each day. This month she’s thinking about “innocence and grace and wobbly starts and losses and gains.” The meditative, centering aspects of writing haiku, of distillation, is a wonderful way to achieve a degree of clarity.

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Donna at Mainely Write is once again writing a poem each day for the A to Z Challenge. Her theme this year will be signs she has photographed. This will be her fourth straight year writing poems for this challenge.

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Here at Alphabet Soup, where we celebrate poetry year round with our weekly Friday Feasts, we’ll be featuring some very cool newly published poetry picture books. And just for you (because we like to call ’em as we see ’em), we’re serving up a little extra treat: HotTEAs of Children’s Poetry. That’s right! These dudes are not only fair of face, but know just how to spark the poetic fire of enthusiasm and inspiration. They sip their cuppas with the best of them and their laptops are always smokin’! Fair Warning: best to keep your oven mitts handy. 🙂

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Finally, don’t forget to check in each week with the April Poetry Friday hosts to see what other bloggers are sharing.

I have a soft spot for Stevenson because of his Hawaii association. Will keep him in mind for future HotTEAs. The HotTEAs I’ll be featuring this month are poets still very much alive and kicking in the kidlit world. 🙂

LOL — Cornelius said since it’s poetry month, you can have seconds and thirds and fourths! Glad you’re getting your tea mug ready (I love hearts) for this month’s serving of HotTEAs. In addition to your oven mitts, have something handy you can fan yourself with :D.

National Poetry Month…yippee! Thanks for the roundup, Jama! What a lot of fun!
I will have a post every Friday at my blog, a penny and her jots. Each post will feature a new episode in my A Great Nephew and a Great Aunt series. Landon and I will team up on the 10th and the other Fridays are filled up with guests 🙂http://pennyklostermann.com/blog-a-penny-and-her-jots/

Jama, you are amazing with your round up. Can you please add this to your piece or maybe at another time so everyone will know? Winter Whisperings: Gallery of Artistic Expressions will be unveiled soon. So many people have been asking me when. In addition, I am participating in several poetry challenges all under the title of “Poetry Parade” that can be found on my blog site, Beyond LiteracyLink. My first post for Poetry Parade is up tonight while I am designing the gallery. Thank you.

It’s good to have chosen
A living home
And housed time
In a ceaseless heart
And seen my hands
Alight on the world,
As on an apple
In a little garden,
To have loved the earth,
The moon and the sun
Like old friends
Who have no equals,
And to have committed
The world to memory
Like a bright horseman
To his black steed,
To have given a face
To these words — woman, children,
And to have been a shore
For the wandering continents
And to have come upon the soul
With tiny strokes of the oars,
For it is scared away
By a brusque approach.
It is beautiful to have known
The shade under the leaves,
And to have felt age
Creep over the naked body,
And have accompanied pain
Of black blood in our veins,
And gilded its silence
With the star, Patience,
And to have all these words
Moving around in the head,
To choose the least beautiful of them
And let them have a ball,
To have felt life,
Hurried and ill loved,
And locked it up
In this poetry.

Jama, you honor me by posting my Poetry Parade information and the Winter Whisperings Gallery that is ready to be unveiled. Here is the secret: I am featuring J. Patrick Lewis’ poetic form, the zeno with a two for one special. He wrote two zenos in one poem accompanied by Georgia O’Keefe’s Above the Clouds I.

Fabulous post! I do something similar, but on a much smaller scale than yours for National Poetry Month every year. I really enjoyed discovering all of the new-to-me blogs (and a couple of familiar ones.) I found your post through Savvy Verse & Wit’s Blog Tour.

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